I went to Lynda Hawryluk's launch of Sub-Urban Poems, which was a nice, friendly affair all up, but with a really quite odd moment in the launch of the actual collection. It was launched by a poet called Tug Dumbly, who I'd not heard of before then, but who I think has an unfortunate stage name... anyhow he stands up, in front of people, a middle aged man in black, fairly nondescript in this environment, and he walks up to the little podium, taps the microphone, and begins to talk about the collection and Lynda, as you do in these things, except that after about five minutes he stops and says he is going to read a poem.

I thought to myself, Well, it's probably going to be a poem about Lynda or the book or some such thing.

But no.

It was just his own every day, average, a few moments of funny but nothing that funny quite long poem about a giant joint that had nothing to do with the book or poet being launched. In the end, he spent about twice the time reading his own poem that had nothing to do with Lynda or the book, than he did talking about either. It was just a bit odd, really, and like nothing I'd seen before.